Steps
by INMH
Summary: Similar to Tenacity, only it’s Gary’s story. Mostly how his mind works, with a bit of his past in there for flavor. I even snuck in a crossover with a popular eighties TV series. Yes. I am a geek.


Steps

Rating: PG-13/T

Genre: Drama/Angst

Summary: Similar to Tenacity, only it's Gary's story. Mostly how his mind works, with a bit of his past in there for flavor. I even snuck in a crossover with a popular eighties TV series.

Author's Note: Yeah. Just as a heads up, I am a ridiculously obsessed Golden Girls fan… And let me tell you, I could not get the imagined conversations between Gary and Sophia out of my head. You CAN'T tell me that that isn't one hell of an interesting picture.

Disclaimer: I don't own Bully or The Golden Girls. They belong to Rockstar Vancouver and… Okay, I don't know who owns the Golden Girls. All you need to know is that it isn't me.

--

Aggression.

When you hear the word 'sociopath', you think of hardened, psychotic serial killers, don't you? Not innocent (in appearance, at any rate) little boys with big, innocent brown eyes and a sweet and deceiving smile.

It started when he was young. Four, maybe. The pre-school teacher said that he had an aggressive personality, and had a tendency to bully the other children in the school. The teacher called him a bully, his father called him irritating, his mother said nothing (as usual) and his great-grandmother called him strong-willed.

Gary called it payback. Those stupid brats had been bugging them, so he bugged them back. Literally- he stuck spiders down the back of their shirts and watched them squirm and shriek.

As he got older, he got smarter, and learned quickly that cutting back on open aggression made potential targets believe that he was of little threat- physically. Gary could fight, though. Ironically enough, it was his great-grandmother that taught him the best moves; she'd lived in Sicily until her late teens, and she said that if you didn't learn to fight for yourself there, you'd learn to swim- with the fishes.

He had plenty of anger, but he controlled it- tucked it away and used the energy for scheming rather than pointless fist-fights. Besides, physical fighting wasn't his preferred style; he liked the intricacy of a good scheme that could really screw with a guy's mind.

-

Deceitful.

He'd shown many negative tendencies when he was little, but Gary had also shown a very positive one- He was very intelligent. Not enough to bump him ahead a grade, but it was enough to put him quite a bit ahead of the others in his first grade class. And trust me- his teacher would have given just about anything to get him out of her class.

Intelligence could be a blessing… Or a curse.

Some six-year-olds (mostly girls) would spread lies and call other kids mean names-maybe tug the occasional ponytail or two. Some six-year-olds (mostly boys) would get into silly little fights and meet at the flag-pole at recess to beat each other up and decide who was tougher.

Gary, however, was a different breed. Because of his intelligence, he was much better at manipulation and getting his way without any of the children realizing just what he was up to. He could- and did- spread lies about people and say that someone else said it, simply because he enjoyed seeing the reaction of the two or three people in question. It was a sport for him.

Of course, the teachers in his school weren't stupid. They obviously didn't catch him at all his mischief, but they did sometimes. He couldn't say that they were the brightest in the world- they, like many others, often underestimated just how smart he was and just what he was willing to do with that knowledge. But they caught on enough to keep an eye on him- enough for some of the younger teachers to even be a little afraid of him.

-

Superficial charm.

Grandma Sophia (His great-grandmother) had never bought the innocent act when he was younger- and Gary was a pretty good actor. He'd fooled his parents, his classmates, his teachers, many other adults, but never Grandma Sophia. She was old- damn old- but she was sharp, too. And being a pretty good actor herself, it wasn't too hard to figure out when someone was trying to pull one over on her.

She always called him out on it. "Don't even try, Gary. I know you took the cookie- put it back." After a while, even when he'd hit his teens, he just tried to see if he could do it. But no matter how old either of them got, Gary did not win, and Sophia did not become any less sharp.

Others, however, were not as sharp. Compiled with the fact that, once he'd transferred to Bullworth, no one knew much about his nature, it was almost child's play to screw with their heads.

But of all things that Gary was, what he was _not_ was impulsive. He planned everything he did very, very carefully. His mind, remember, was his greatest asset. After assessing the layout of Bullworth, he concluded many things:

One, the Jocks, Bullies and Greasers were not people he wanted to mess with too much. They were massively stupid, but they were also big, and they could probably snap him like a twig if they so desired to.

Two, the Nerds were not as wimpy as they appeared- he did not underestimate them, nor did he ignore the fact that they were probably just as smart- maybe not as clever- but as smart as he was, and might not be as easy to deceive. Not to mention, since they were generally ignored or bullied by others, if someone tried to charm them, they'd probably become suspicious.

Three, the Preps were easy targets. Disregarding their money, they were not too bright, ridiculously inbred, and pretty damn weak, save for the big one that looked more like a Jock in Aquaberry. Not to mention, they used money as such a crutch so heavily that they believed no one could touch them.

Haha… He looked forward to proving them wrong.

-

Inability to tolerate boredom.

Gary's impatience and restlessness was more so a product of his ADD than anything else. Accompanied with the Spawn-of-Satan reputation and great intelligence was a reputation of being able to sit still in class. He had to be twitching, tapping, swinging his leg, squirming in his chair, moving _somehow_. Remaining totally still had been utter torture for him.

His father, the eternal pillar of compassion and understanding, had diagnosed it as a child's irritating hyperactivity- and if Gary didn't cut it out, he'd be seeing the business end of the belt. He hadn't been able to stop, and Gary had actually tried this time.

And he ended up seeing the business end of his father's belt. And he'd be seeing it for the rest of his life- the clasp had opened and left a long scratch across his right eye. It scarred- and that was the first time he really felt _hate_ for his father.

The teacher, Mrs. Colberry, had been the one to suggest that Gary be tested for ADD. When the tests came back positive, they put him on medication. It made him calm- but it almost made him ill. Mentally ill, physically ill, socially ill. It slowed him down, and he hated it. He couldn't _think_ clearly any more.

His father, as usual, was no help. He could not wrap his mind around the idea of ADD, and believed that threatening to hit him if he didn't stay the hell still would work. It didn't- Gary stayed as still as he could when around his father, but his mother continued getting the medication and making sure that he took it.

At seven (by then), he was already starting to wonder when and how he'd be able to get away with ditching the meds.

-

Depression

Sophia and her daughter had raised Holy Hell about the scar when they saw it, and threatened Gary's mother to take him away if she didn't say something to her 'rotten, child-beating husband'. This was the first time that Gary had ever felt real depression. Not the blues- we're talking severe, alarming depression. Not something a lot of seven-year-old boys got.

Gary knew very well what suicide was. One of his classmates had a brother that tried to kill himself. He failed, to the fortune of the classmate's family, but it got Gary thinking. How did one go about killing themselves? Mind you, death was still a fairly murky concept to him. He was at the age where it was a little difficult to distinguish heavy sleeping from death.

The classmate said their brother had tried to kill himself by cutting his wrists (Right before Mrs. Colberry had ended the topic, declaring it inappropriate for class). Here, Gary was confused. He'd gotten cut before, but he didn't die. His mother had said something about an infection, but that didn't seem right…

And so, on one really bad night with a lot of yelling and threatening, Gary had experimented. It was just a poke with the end of his pencil. A hard poke, enough to draw blood. But the pain drew him back to a fairly coherent reality, and it scared him- he quickly tossed the pencil onto his bed and grabbed a tissue to cover his wrist. It was sore for a day, but he didn't entertain the idea of suicide until he was fifteen.

-

Inability to make or keep friends.

Gary had never felt a need to make friends. He was a loner, and preferred being free to do what he wanted without being bothered by others. Hell, they steered clear of Gary at nearly all costs. At Bullworth, no one… _Hated_ him, per se; the Jocks disliked him because he disliked sports, the Greasers disliked him because he wasn't… Well, greasy.

The Preps didn't like him because he wasn't rich, the Nerds didn't like him because he teased them, the Bullies disliked him because they were _bullies,_ and everyone else disliked him because they thought he was a snake.

Of course, dislike doesn't always outweigh desperation.

And that's where dear little Petey came in. Where Gary had once thought of friends as a liability, there was now the possibility of one being entertaining. Not someone who could make him laugh entertaining, but… punching-bag entertaining. You could do whatever the hell you wanted to it and it would never leave.

It was a little sick- Petey was so desperate for companionship that he went to the guy that most people would slit their throats before going near. And he put up with his fair share of abuse, after all. He was open season for Gary, and inspired new and inventive insults for the already sadistic boy. Femme-boy, Pinky (This was a double-insult for obvious reasons), Nancy-boy, the list went on and on.

He made fun of Petey's like for swimming, made fun of his slight feminine traits (one miniscule incident and Petey was hearing about it for months afterwards), made fun of his wimpiness, made fun of his lack of friends, made fun of anything Petey did at any given time, and basically made any seemingly good day into an eternally miserable one for Petey.

Things went on like this for a while, with no signs of change…

-

Violates the rights of others.

Then Jimmy came.

And by this time, he was so far off his meds you'd never know he had them in the first place. Well, at least by Halloween. Jimmy was a prime target to Gary- he didn't seem too bright, he was aggressive, and above all else, he was the _new boy._ The very word was enough to send shivers down one's spine, even if they weren't new. It was a very, very bad position to have in Bullworth. You were Daffy Duck in a season fight with Bugs Bunny. And we all know who wins every time.

Petey was of little use to Gary other than stress release. But Jimmy… As was said before, Gary was not a confrontational guy. He liked to work behind the scenes, scheming, a puppet master among puppets. And Jimmy… Dear God, he was a giant fox to let loose in the hen house. Just the type he could manipulate into screwing with the cliques. Get everyone pissed at Jimmy, Gary steps in with solution, the cliques like Gary better, then he screws them all over in the end…

It was so perfect. And he had just discovered the Townies, so they were another factor… They were pretty stupid as well, a probable result of ditching school more than they attended (it seemed to be a requirement for them…).

It was more fun than he'd had in a long, long time.

Who needed meds? He'd waited for the day he could totally ditch them, and it'd finally come.

-

Sense of extreme entitlement.

Gary had wanted to rule the school. Wanted to make all the others feel like ants under the magnifying glass.

And by God, he _had_.

He'd taken over the school.

He'd taken out the Head.

He was in control of the Prefects.

He was Head Boy.

He'd started a full-scale riot, for pity's sake.

Jimmy had been at the mercy of all the cliques (save the Bullies, for some unfathomable reason) and he'd never even realized it until it was too late! Had he really been so stupid as to think that Derby, Johnny, Ted and Earnest would bend so easily for him? It was so sad it was funny. Oh, and Petey had warned him and helped him all the way, but in the end Jimmy's head had swelled a little too much, and he ignored the one person who didn't want him dead.

Standing on the planks high on the building and taunting Jimmy felt great. Being on the roof felt even greater. He felt _power_. He was on top of the frigging world, and he would be damned if he was going to come down without a fight. And Jimmy- stupid, stupid Jimmy- had thought that they were friends?

Stupid.

Not like Gary.

They fought, and they must've shaken the planks too much, because it gave way and sent them both crashing through the roof into Crabblesnitch's office (where Gary had gleefully tied him up about an hour beforehand). And there he'd lain, vaguely hearing Crabblesnitch expel him from the Academy. He was in shock- Jimmy had beaten him. Taken him out.

And like his depressive experiment nearly nine years ago, the pain from a concussion, dislocated shoulder and three cracked ribs (maybe from the fall, maybe from his insane laughter) shocked him back into reality.


End file.
